The Cobra artists made a serious impact in their short four-year history in post-war Europe, writes Aidan Dunne, Art Critic
For students of recent art history, the most difficult thing about the Cobra group of artists used to be the irregular pattern of capitalisation built into the acronym. Strictly speaking, Cobra should be CoBrA, in deference to the geographical spread of its constituent partners. Co for Copenhagen, Br for Brussels and A for Amsterdam. But over time the unwieldy CoBrA has settled into the more linguistically-supple Cobra.
Less than helpfully, the group was formally founded in none of these cities but in Paris, but part of its significance was that it represented a potential shift in the status of Paris as the art capital of Europe, for the title was derived from the home cities of the main participants.
Cobra was a short-lived, heterogeneous phenomenon, flourishing from 1948 to 1951, when it voted itself out of existence, but many of the artists it united went on to pursue high profile individual careers, and its influence was widespread.
It is often compared to Abstract Expressionism in America, but it is not really an equivalent. Although, despite the promotion of Jackson Pollock as an all-American hero, Abstract Expressionism was substantially rooted in the nutritive ground of European culture, European artists could not really do Abstract Expressionism. It just came out as something else, something comparatively tighter and more self-consciously contrived, whatever its intrinsic merits. This applies to the work of such artists as Georges Mathieu or Hans Hartung.
Cobra, though, was something different, springing directly from conditions in post-war Europe, fiercely engaged socially and politically. Provocative and iconoclastic, it was also anti-nationalist and reformist, espousing enlightened urban planning, for example. The group was never abstract. Figurative imagery, however violently distorted and transformed, was always at its heart.
Its tempestuous energy and wilful expressiveness reflected a distrust of the cool rationality of Modernist formalism. In fact, Cobra was the expression of a primitivist impulse that was periodically applied to Western art throughout the 20th century as a revitalising force, even as late as Neo-Expressionism in the 1980s. By appealing directly to the unconscious, to the untutored eyes of children and various kinds of outsiders, artists sought to bypass the corrupting influence of learned modes of perception and behaviour, and achieve a raw authenticity.
While the notion of such a detached, authentic position has been substantially discounted in contemporary cultural theory, Graham Birtwhistle, writing in the catalogue, makes an excellent job of mapping out the context within which the Cobra artists functioned. He details the cultural logic of their use of the since-discredited term "primitivism", allowing us to view and judge them from their own temporal perspective rather than ours.
Curator Peter Shield has drawn extensively on the work shown in two exhibitions that, he says, represent the high point of the group. The first International Exhibition of Experimental Art was held in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1949, the second in the Palais des Beaux Arts in Liège in 1951, following which the group disbanded. Within its brief lifespan, Cobra encompassed the activities of about 60 artists and writers, although 20 or so feature here.
If its agenda sounds largely negative and destructive, the work itself may come as a refreshing surprise. Certainly there are elements of dark fantasy in the paintings of Dutch artist Constant (Constant Nieuwenhaus). While he explicitly drew on children's art as a model, the results are far from anodyne. His fiercely direct images have the extreme emotions of a childish imagination haunted by demons and monsters.
In a different way, he is matched in the sheer level of attack by the Danish artists Asger Jorn, who also came up with a startling imaginative bestiary and could be violently arbitrary in a way that challenged the boundaries of pictorial control.
Although Jorn's role in Cobra was forestalled by tuberculosis and other factors, he recovered, remained true to the Cobra ideals and was a hugely energetic presence in Danish and European art until his death in 1973.
The work of the Dutch painter Karel Appel was also directly indebted to children's art. Yet despite the expressive extremity of his approach, with its violent, grotesque distortions, there is usually something poised and sophisticated about his images which do not, all the same, come across as false or contrived. While the vehemence of the work may still take some viewers aback, it is unlikely to arouse anything like the incomprehension and disapproval it attracted at the time of its original showing.
The Belgian Pierre Alichinsky is interesting in that he remained more measured in his use of primitive or naive ways of seeing. There is always a sure pictorial intelligence at work in his compositions which employ a strong sense of overall patterning and subtle colour harmonies. In a way, the same could be said of the work of Corneille (Cornelis van Beverloo) at the time.
Corneille is also a graphic artist of considerable ability and one of the things that emerges strongly in this show is the importance and the remarkable quality of graphic work for the Cobra artists. Most of the artists, including the poet-turned-visual artist Lucebert (Lubertus van Swaanswijk), display wonderfully-inventive graphic skills, indebted to such exemplars as Miró, but still fresh and engaging in their spontaneity. And that is something that holds true for Cobra overall.
Cobra: Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam is at IMMA, Royal Hospital, Kilmainham until September 21st. www.modernart.ie